The use of weather band radios by which to receive information associated with weather alerts and warnings provides listeners with information related to weather anomalies, such as severe weather warnings. As a result of improved ability of weather forecasting and reporting authorities, advanced warnings of potentially dangerous weather, and other, conditions are able to be forecast, tracked, and reported in timely manners.
The National Weather Service is an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States Department of Commerce. A voice radio broadcast system was initiated by the National Weather Service in the late 1950s. The weather broadcast service provided by the National Weather Service later was named the NOAA Weather Radio (NWR). The NWR is broadcast at a Very High Frequency (VHF) radio band, extending between 162.400 MHz and 162.550 MHz. Seven channels are defined within the frequency band and information is broadcast by transmitting stations located in various geographical regions.
The NWR, starting in the 1960s, broadcast a single tone at 1050 Hz, prior to the broadcast of a message relating to a potentially dangerous event. The single tone is sometimes referred to as a warning alarm tone (WAT). Weather band radios are sometimes operable to detect the warning alarm tone and, responsive to its detection, automatically to turn on the speaker of the weather band radio to annunciate aurally the detected tone.
In the 1980s, the National Weather Service implemented broadcast of digital codes together with the tone alerting the existence of the severe weather, or other, emergency condition. An NWR specific area message encoding (NWR SAME) is the standardized format of the digital code.
Weather band radio receivers constructed to detect the digital message are provided with the informational content of the digital message. An NWR SAME message includes various fields, including a field that identifies the geographic region associated with an accompanying weather alert message. The weather band radio capable of detecting the digital message and operating responsive thereto, is operated, if desired, to alert only weather alerts associated with a geographical area of interest of a listener of the weather band radio. The radio, however, must be personalized by the listener to operate in this manner. That is to say, the geographical area of interest to the listener must be identified and input into the radio. The code is a six-digit sequence that identifies and area, such as by state, then county, then portion of a county. Unlike a spelled name of an area, formed of a sequence of alphanumeric symbols, a six-digit sequence is less likely to be known by a listener of the weather band radio. Personalization of the weather band radio conventionally requires entry by the multi-digit code associated with the listener's area of interest. If the listener is unaware of the code, the listener must make separate inquiry of the code associated with the listener's geographical area of interest. The separate inquiry is oftentimes inconvenient and, sometimes, even unavailable to the listener. Personalization of the weather band radio to the listener's area of interest is inconvenienced by the need to resort to external inquiry or, if external inquiry is not available, the personalization of the weather band radio can not be effectuated.
If a manner could be provided by which to set up a weather band radio to facilitate its personalization to a listener's geographical area of interest, improved ease of set up of the weather band radio would be provided.
It is in light of this background information related to weather band radios that the significant improvements of the present invention have evolved.